Sunday, October 6, 2013

The White Queen Recap: Long Live the King

Whoops—this recap is a little late. I didn't have the chance to watch this week's episode until tonight (on demand channels, you are a godsend!), thus the delay in writing this post.

This was a bit of a tough episode for me to watch because it marked the start of a chain of events that I've been dreading seeing play out in the series. I think both history and Shakespeare have been rather unkind to the real Richard III, and I'm really not looking forward to the final two episodes, the last one in particular. I feel like Episode 8 moved quite swiftly and covered a lot of territory, and I'm a little stumped as to how to break it down like I've been doing for the previous episodes. So for this post, I'm just going to write in regular paragraphs without headings.

Last week saw the downfall of George, Duke of Clarence, ending with his execution for treason. This week's episode opens with some informative onscreen titles to let you know that it's now 1483 (already!). Henry Tudor is all grown up, as are several of Edward and Elizabeth's children. Edward isn't looking so well in the health department, and it's not too far into the episode when it's clear that he's not going to be king for much longer. He asks for Richard while Elizabeth panics about how she's going to keep the throne within her own family. She wants her brother Anthony to rule for Prince Edward until he comes of age, but Edward names Richard Lord Protector.

Edward's death divides the court, and Elizabeth knows she's in trouble. She orders Prince Edward be brought to her in London so he can be crowned, but his escort is intercepted by Richard and Sir Robert Brackenbury. The prince is taken to the Tower of London, and, having been raised by his Woodville relatives, isn't very receptive to Richard. Elizabeth runs to sanctuary with her other children (and a chunk of the royal treasury) and sends a letter to her brother Edward asking him to bring his fleet to her aid. Unfortunately for her, the letter is intercepted and leads to the arrest of her son, Thomas Grey, and her brother, Anthony.

Amidst all of this chaos, Stanley and Margaret are biding their time, waiting for the right moment to snag the throne for Henry. For all of her religious fervor for the past how many weeks, Margaret proves herself quite the plotter and manipulator here, pretending to be Elizabeth's friend while Stanley feigns being on Richard's side. Oh Margaret, despite all of your talk about how you wanted to become a nun and whatnot, we all know that you're willing to do anything to see your darling become King of England.

Anne shows off a pretty ambitious side in this episode as well, urging Richard to punish Anthony Woodville and going so far as to exhort him to take the crown for himself. And so Richard eventually does both, ordering the executions of Anthony and Elizabeth's other son from her first marriage, Richard Grey, and ascending the throne as Richard III.

I'm sorry, but I rolled my eyes a tad when Elizabeth cursed Richard's sword arm and the scene cut to Richard gripping his arm in pain. Is that going to come back to haunt him at Bosworth in two weeks?

Um, I also couldn't take the Duke of Buckingham too seriously with that hairdo. Rory from Doctor Who, I barely recognized ye!

Well, only two episodes remain. Did I mention how much I'm absolutely dreading them for Richard's sake?

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comments:

Remember History always is unkind to the losers and makes them look like the bad guys when the truth is always a little bit harder. Also they take a lot of liberties with the books and Margaret is only doing what she thinks is right. We know Henry Tudor will become ruler of England. It was a really good episode.

Sadly, I only caught a few minutes of it because I hardly have any time for reading, blogging, and TV at the moment. :( Last week was a little less crazy than the week before, so I hope to slowly reclaim some of my fun time, lol. Klaus was one of the best things about TVD; I'm happy he got his own show, though I also really like Elijah a lot!